CollectionTalk: A Conversation with Artist Mel Chin
Sheldon Museum of Art
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04/05/2022
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Students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln selected two works by Mel Chin for the collection of Sheldon Museum of Art. On March 24, Chin joined students and faculty a cross-disciplinary conversation about the works and the green remediation project from which they were made.
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- [00:00:06.820]I'm delighted to welcome you all here tonight.
- [00:00:08.970]I'm Laura Reznicek.
- [00:00:10.350]I work at Sheldon.
- [00:00:12.386]And here we are at our March Collection Talk event tonight
- [00:00:17.440]to discuss Mel Chin's work.
- [00:00:19.834]Before we get started,
- [00:00:21.200]I wanted to extend several notes of appreciation.
- [00:00:24.630]First, to those of you here tonight who are Sheldon members.
- [00:00:28.040]Sheldon members make this event possible
- [00:00:30.440]and they keep the museum running every day,
- [00:00:32.640]and thank you to them.
- [00:00:34.100]And if you're interested in membership,
- [00:00:35.600]please go to our website and find out more.
- [00:00:38.740]Members are very important to us.
- [00:00:41.420]Tonight's conversation comes as a result
- [00:00:43.720]of a recent acquisition
- [00:00:45.070]made by the Sheldon Student Advisory Board
- [00:00:47.290]of a work of art by Mel Chin
- [00:00:49.090]that is currently on view
- [00:00:50.470]in the exhibition "The Scene Changes."
- [00:00:52.618]I wanna thank the exhibition sponsors,
- [00:00:55.293]Roseann and Phil Perry, Rhonda Seacrest,
- [00:00:58.190]and Donna Woods and Jon Hinrichs.
- [00:01:00.470]And I want to encourage you all
- [00:01:02.070]to come view the work in person,
- [00:01:04.400]if that's possible for you.
- [00:01:07.550]I also wanna invite you
- [00:01:08.680]to the final Collection Talk event of the spring.
- [00:01:11.520]On April 28th, artist Amanda Ross-Ho
- [00:01:14.275]will be in conversation about "Gone Tomorrow",
- [00:01:17.315]which is a sculpture
- [00:01:18.680]in which she recreated a single gold earring
- [00:01:21.710]at a monumental scale.
- [00:01:25.300]As for tonight,
- [00:01:26.133]we'd love for you to engage with the guests
- [00:01:28.240]that we have here.
- [00:01:29.390]So even though you're going to be muted,
- [00:01:31.330]please use the chat box
- [00:01:33.031]to type any questions or comments as we go.
- [00:01:36.010]Those will all be monitored,
- [00:01:37.870]and we will toss those out to our speakers towards the end.
- [00:01:42.650]And there will also be a time for questions at the end.
- [00:01:46.310]So I think that's all the housekeeping.
- [00:01:47.970]And with that out of way,
- [00:01:49.050]I'm going to turn it over to Erin Hanas,
- [00:01:51.670]Sheldon's Curator of Academic Engagement,
- [00:01:53.900]and she will introduce our speakers tonight.
- [00:01:57.740]Great. Thank you, Laura.
- [00:01:59.040]And thank you all.
- [00:02:00.670]Echoing Laura's thanks,
- [00:02:01.700]thank you all for joining us.
- [00:02:03.670]Before I introduce our first speaker,
- [00:02:06.030]I'd like to say a bit
- [00:02:07.160]about the Sheldon Student Advisory Board, or the SSAB.
- [00:02:11.418]This cross-disciplinary group,
- [00:02:13.570]which is open to all University of Nebraska students,
- [00:02:16.460]meets weekly to learn about museum operations,
- [00:02:19.440]collection strategies and exhibition management.
- [00:02:22.930]Each year, one of the groups' primary activities
- [00:02:26.200]is to research and recommend a work of art for acquisition.
- [00:02:29.782]The student selection process
- [00:02:31.850]rigorously mirrors that of the curatorial staff,
- [00:02:35.010]giving the students opportunities for experiential learning,
- [00:02:38.599]and the acquisition project is now in its fifth year.
- [00:02:42.795]For the 2021/22 year,
- [00:02:46.770]the SSAB selected the two works
- [00:02:48.653]from Mel Chin's "Revival Field" project,
- [00:02:51.702]that are the subject of this evening's program.
- [00:02:55.370]And give me a moment,
- [00:02:57.470]I'll share my screen so you can see these works.
- [00:03:08.570]There you are.
- [00:03:11.735]And just briefly,
- [00:03:13.687]I wanted to give a quick overview
- [00:03:15.850]of how tonight's program will run.
- [00:03:18.110]So, Mel Chin will begin with an artist talk.
- [00:03:21.360]Then, Molly Beck, a member of the SSAB,
- [00:03:24.710]will speak about why the students selected Mr. Chin's works
- [00:03:27.980]for the museum's collection.
- [00:03:30.090]Next, three faculty members will share insights
- [00:03:32.950]and responses to Mr. Chin's work
- [00:03:35.340]from the perspectives of their disciplines.
- [00:03:37.820]Professor Katie Anania from art history,
- [00:03:40.400]Professor Xu Li from civil and environmental engineering,
- [00:03:43.935]and Professor Sabrina Russo from biological sciences.
- [00:03:48.260]And as Laura already mentioned,
- [00:03:49.950]the program will conclude with time for audience questions,
- [00:03:52.920]so we welcome you to type your questions or comments
- [00:03:56.340]into the chat box.
- [00:03:58.990]Now I will stop my sharing here.
- [00:04:02.383]And it is my pleasure to introduce our first speaker,
- [00:04:07.000]Mel Chin.
- [00:04:09.610]Mel Chin is a conceptual artist
- [00:04:11.870]whose work is analytical and poetic,
- [00:04:14.600]and evades easy classification.
- [00:04:17.010]His art often requires multidisciplinary,
- [00:04:19.880]collaborative teamwork,
- [00:04:21.383]and conjoins cross-cultural aesthetics with complex ideas.
- [00:04:25.980]Insinuating art into unlikely places
- [00:04:28.680]such as destroyed homes, toxic landfills,
- [00:04:31.680]and popular television,
- [00:04:33.510]he investigates how art can provoke greater social awareness
- [00:04:37.230]and responsibility.
- [00:04:39.130]A conceptual philosophy
- [00:04:40.370]that emphasizes the practice of art
- [00:04:42.580]to include sculpting and bridging
- [00:04:44.730]the natural and social ecology,
- [00:04:47.440]underpins many of his projects.
- [00:04:50.500]Mr. Chin's work was documented
- [00:04:52.310]in the popular PBS program, "Art of the 21st Century."
- [00:04:55.853]Twice a National Endowment for the Arts fellow,
- [00:04:59.150]he has received many awards and grants,
- [00:05:01.264]including fellowships
- [00:05:03.130]from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2015,
- [00:05:07.477]and the MacArthur Foundation in 2019.
- [00:05:10.930]So with that, welcome Mr. Chin.
- [00:05:13.914]Hey, how you doing?
- [00:05:15.240]Okay.
- [00:05:16.380]So yeah,
- [00:05:18.230]I'm so pleased to be with you today,
- [00:05:20.580]and glad that we may...
- [00:05:23.609]Unfortunately, I might have an unstable connection,
- [00:05:26.499]but I'm with you, very stable.
- [00:05:29.230]I won't use the word genius,
- [00:05:30.870]I will just maintain stability.
- [00:05:33.540]So, I think I'll share my screen
- [00:05:35.480]and just talk about the pieces, the project,
- [00:05:38.350]so we can have a little history, background to it.
- [00:05:42.090]And let's see if I can get there, okay?
- [00:05:45.450]So "Revival Field",
- [00:05:46.990]it came at a time when I stopped making art for a while,
- [00:05:56.600]because I didn't...
- [00:05:58.770]I was maybe busted, disgusted, couldn't be trusted.
- [00:06:00.970]I had my first big museum show at the Hirshhorn,
- [00:06:06.714]and then afterwards I had these ruminations
- [00:06:10.200]about hearing voices in my head.
- [00:06:12.370]And one of them said, "What do you love doing?"
- [00:06:14.480]It says, "Well, you love working with your hands.
- [00:06:16.480]You like making objects
- [00:06:18.847]and like to make these research projects."
- [00:06:21.827]And there's another voice said, "Stop."
- [00:06:24.715]And I said, "I hear you. I will."
- [00:06:27.026]By the time I got down that elevator,
- [00:06:29.731]I really was convinced I would go back to New York,
- [00:06:34.290]I was living in New York at the time,
- [00:06:36.260]and not make art for a while.
- [00:06:38.680]Now this is unusual,
- [00:06:39.610]'cause it's after a major exhibition.
- [00:06:42.295]And I would start looking at everything but art.
- [00:06:45.540]And I started looking at science books, literature,
- [00:06:49.773]and even like hippie books or hippie magazines,
- [00:06:53.190]like the "Whole Earth Review."
- [00:06:55.420]And then I came upon an article
- [00:06:58.030]by this psilocybin expert and ethnobotanist,
- [00:07:01.612]Terence McKenna, in the "Whole Earth Review".
- [00:07:05.500]It talked about plants having this capacity to clean soil.
- [00:07:09.895]Now I became engaged in this concept
- [00:07:14.515]and thought the poetics of it was absolutely appropriate,
- [00:07:19.900]that if that were the case,
- [00:07:21.510]then perhaps what we're looking at,
- [00:07:23.860]sculpture becoming like an ecology
- [00:07:26.070]that has been damaged and reviving it through plants,
- [00:07:29.880]as the chisels and science as the basic backbone
- [00:07:33.080]of the project to guide those plants.
- [00:07:36.130]Of course, when I did the real deep research,
- [00:07:38.810]I found that there was no evidence of the plants
- [00:07:41.580]that he mentioned that would do that.
- [00:07:44.460]I did reach, finally, after maybe six months,
- [00:07:48.250]Dr. Rufus Chaney.
- [00:07:50.110]And Dr. Chaney,
- [00:07:51.160]when I mentioned the datura plant
- [00:07:53.360]that was indicated as a possible cleanup tool,
- [00:07:57.820]he said, "Well, that will get you high,
- [00:08:00.770]but it won't clean the soil,"
- [00:08:02.890]so I knew (laughs) I'd found the right person.
- [00:08:05.760]Of course, Dr. Chaney began to speak of things
- [00:08:10.096]in terms of art like, "Oh, I can make a plant go red.
- [00:08:15.080]I can make a plant go this way."
- [00:08:17.070]He was trying to make art,
- [00:08:18.150]and I was not interested in this.
- [00:08:20.500]I was interested in what he had postulated
- [00:08:23.540]but had shelved,
- [00:08:24.970]this idea of hyperaccumulation in plants.
- [00:08:28.160]But I realized that my ability to discuss it with him
- [00:08:32.050]in any professional level was limited,
- [00:08:35.767]so he recommended books to read.
- [00:08:38.940]He recommended Robert Richard Brook's book
- [00:08:42.720]on "Biochemical Methods of Prospecting",
- [00:08:45.670]or something like that.
- [00:08:47.500]It's Wiley and Sons.
- [00:08:48.910]The science and the team here can double check that.
- [00:08:52.230]But I began to understand
- [00:08:55.090]what the possibilities really were.
- [00:08:57.930]And so we started with this field test.
- [00:09:00.720]I realized that, Dr. Chaney said,
- [00:09:03.277]"Well, you know,
- [00:09:04.920]I can't really collaborate."
- [00:09:06.620]We call it a collaboration,
- [00:09:07.780]but it was actually not allowed,
- [00:09:10.199]because he was not allowed to do work in this field.
- [00:09:13.990]And I said, "We'll have to work our way around it.
- [00:09:16.510]I've got this grant that I might get from the NEA
- [00:09:19.580]for like $10,000."
- [00:09:21.290]He said, "Well, the experiment may be $100,000,
- [00:09:23.680]but it needs to be a replicated field test,
- [00:09:26.980]because it has never been planted in the world."
- [00:09:31.830]I said, then let's draw it up.
- [00:09:33.720]And let me match the poetics of the art dimension
- [00:09:37.040]with the pragmatism and what you need.
- [00:09:38.500]So this was the early study that I put forward.
- [00:09:42.897]You know, what happened was the project...
- [00:09:48.872]Let me see if I can advance this.
- [00:09:52.920]What happened was,
- [00:09:54.465]after I entered this collaboration science project
- [00:10:00.670]with the NEA,
- [00:10:01.750]it moves all the way up the ladder.
- [00:10:03.950]It got the votes.
- [00:10:05.110]And then at the last minute,
- [00:10:08.160]I was told that the chair
- [00:10:09.950]of the National Endowment for the Arts
- [00:10:12.736]had vetoed my project,
- [00:10:14.440]which, you can't even go back and change that.
- [00:10:17.540]And I'd worked a year without making art,
- [00:10:20.100]being like this guy who would go to parties now
- [00:10:23.610]no longer to talk about what I was making.
- [00:10:26.980]But I don't know if you've ever seen the film
- [00:10:29.529]"The Graduate",
- [00:10:30.362]but there's a guy that's walking around,
- [00:10:32.880]I'm not the chief character or Mrs. Robinson,
- [00:10:35.270]I was actually the guy walking around
- [00:10:36.970]that was, instead of saying "plastics",
- [00:10:40.015]I was saying "plants".
- [00:10:41.900]And people felt I was seriously in need
- [00:10:45.260]of other kinds of help,
- [00:10:47.404]because I should be making art.
- [00:10:49.940]I said, "'Cause I see the art in this."
- [00:10:52.440]And so when this article came out about the rejection,
- [00:10:56.980]it activated...
- [00:10:58.840]to Dr. Chaney,
- [00:10:59.790]it was in the most premier scientific journal, I guess,
- [00:11:03.667]"Science".
- [00:11:04.500]And it verified some of his thoughts.
- [00:11:07.140]The only problem with this article by the way,
- [00:11:09.220]is some of the numbers are wrong.
- [00:11:11.570]The plants actually, they're not...
- [00:11:13.270]You look through it,
- [00:11:14.703]it says 2,500 parts per million of zinc.
- [00:11:17.600]As he said, it actually should be 25,000
- [00:11:19.800]parts per million of zinc.
- [00:11:21.600]It would be what you call a hyperaccumulator.
- [00:11:23.670]So this actually got me involved
- [00:11:26.998]with the entire scientific community.
- [00:11:30.494]They say, "Wait a minute, we're doing this."
- [00:11:32.896]But I worked away, okay?
- [00:11:35.730]What can I say?
- [00:11:37.150]I worked away. We planted the field.
- [00:11:38.793]I can't say all the ways I worked to do this,
- [00:11:41.750]but we started it and it was a success,
- [00:11:44.930]in terms of even accomplishing it.
- [00:11:47.720]Now, it's small. It's not a gigantic situation.
- [00:11:51.420]And a lot of people point to the formality of it.
- [00:11:54.867]And in truth, as an artist I like to do that,
- [00:11:58.120]but it was actually more than that.
- [00:12:00.170]So it's not always this formality of this circle,
- [00:12:03.100]the square, the target.
- [00:12:05.132]It's not always the soil sampling that we had to do
- [00:12:07.960]for three years.
- [00:12:10.230]And it's not just this amazing plant,
- [00:12:13.350]Thlaspi caerulescens is the variety we used,
- [00:12:15.793]that came from a site in Belgium
- [00:12:19.603]that had these plants, or alpine pennythrift,
- [00:12:23.070]had naturally occurred over time,
- [00:12:25.860]over millennia,
- [00:12:26.693]and were able to pick up,
- [00:12:28.350]hyperaccumulate zinc and cadmium.
- [00:12:32.930]And this was the final harvest,
- [00:12:34.870]which the PR department says,
- [00:12:36.297]"Absolutely do not show the skyline of St. Paul,"
- [00:12:39.670]which we absolutely did immediately.
- [00:12:42.670]This is the most important part.
- [00:12:45.087]This line that says Thlaspi.
- [00:12:49.970]This was a verification that it needed for the art project
- [00:12:53.490]actually to propel the scientific technology
- [00:12:56.630]as a possibility of reality.
- [00:12:59.310]And this was probably the most important contribution
- [00:13:03.421]of "Revival Field",
- [00:13:05.460]to say, "Yes, it can happen."
- [00:13:08.647]So anyway, it's been many years.
- [00:13:14.440]I always say "Revival Field" is not done,
- [00:13:16.760]because until we actually clean a whole field up,
- [00:13:19.287]we don't have that.
- [00:13:20.570]But many other scientists are working on this.
- [00:13:23.090]And like Dr. Bates said,
- [00:13:25.130]the other first test site in the world is in England,
- [00:13:30.170]and working on things.
- [00:13:32.270]So I have these things,
- [00:13:34.370]and I think about the whole history.
- [00:13:35.760]And this is from the Field Museum by the way,
- [00:13:38.150]I didn't make this.
- [00:13:39.200]But I love dioramas, okay.
- [00:13:41.670]So, I dig them. Don't y'all?
- [00:13:43.850]I think so.
- [00:13:44.710]I mean, maybe I'm the only one.
- [00:13:47.103]So I decided to do my own diorama,
- [00:13:50.290]which was the "Revival Field" diorama
- [00:13:52.860]with the actual plants and things from the field,
- [00:13:57.570]you see, that I collected for those years ago,
- [00:14:00.670]many years ago.
- [00:14:02.395]So this is in 2014.
- [00:14:04.000]So I began to collect this.
- [00:14:05.170]And this is why I had this new drive
- [00:14:08.535]to create this piece that you have.
- [00:14:12.240]So, it became like something that I said,
- [00:14:15.317]"Well, that diorama's not enough."
- [00:14:16.940]I wanted these sketches to test the methodology
- [00:14:20.070]and to seal the actual plants.
- [00:14:22.120]I had to hydrate them, press them,
- [00:14:24.210]and talk about amounts of the hyper...
- [00:14:25.717]And these are diagrams
- [00:14:27.938]that represent amounts of hyperaccumulation,
- [00:14:30.170]and the other one
- [00:14:31.830]is just about this relationship between them.
- [00:14:34.690]So, these two are just kind of evidence from my own studio,
- [00:14:40.384]of my obsession with this project.
- [00:14:43.890]So I'm so pleased y'all have them.
- [00:14:46.350]And we can go into all the deep questions
- [00:14:50.293]that come from here. Okay?
- [00:14:52.470]I'm sorry that was so long, but we can go forward.
- [00:14:55.440]All right.
- [00:14:56.840]No, that was really wonderful.
- [00:14:59.187]Thank you so much.
- [00:15:01.072]Hopefully for our audience,
- [00:15:03.960]I know for me personally,
- [00:15:05.280]it's really amazing to see the context,
- [00:15:10.405]how the "Revival Field" project really developed
- [00:15:13.960]and then the works that came out of that,
- [00:15:17.190]and just your thinking.
- [00:15:18.380]So before I blabber on too much,
- [00:15:21.410]I want to introduce our next speaker.
- [00:15:25.950]Molly Beck is a senior English major
- [00:15:28.590]with minors in art history and history.
- [00:15:31.320]She has been a member of the SSAB for three years.
- [00:15:35.910]And I will turn it over to you, Molly.
- [00:15:39.020]Thanks Erin.
- [00:15:40.210]So every year,
- [00:15:41.790]SSAB gets together to choose an artwork
- [00:15:44.740]to acquire for Sheldon's collection.
- [00:15:47.490]And this year's acquisition project
- [00:15:49.230]revolved around the theme of climate resilience.
- [00:15:52.390]So once we knew the theme,
- [00:15:53.810]we talked about how expansive this idea could be,
- [00:15:56.600]and we started researching artists
- [00:15:58.770]and looking for relevant works of art
- [00:16:00.500]that were available for purchase.
- [00:16:02.790]It was in this process of researching
- [00:16:04.740]that I encountered Mel Chin and his work for the first time.
- [00:16:08.440]Specifically, I saw an image
- [00:16:10.992]of "Revival Field Plant and Field Study,"
- [00:16:13.110]and I was instantly taken by it.
- [00:16:15.300]When I showed it to the rest of the SSAB members,
- [00:16:18.370]we agreed that it was an extremely compelling work
- [00:16:20.870]and would be a perfect fit for Sheldon,
- [00:16:23.270]seamlessly integrating itself
- [00:16:25.100]into the museum's collection and exhibitions,
- [00:16:27.580]such as the one that it is currently a part of,
- [00:16:29.730]titled, "The Scene Changes."
- [00:16:32.550]When thinking about the theme of climate resilience,
- [00:16:36.015]all of us agreed that we wanted a work
- [00:16:38.620]that pointed to ways we could move forward,
- [00:16:40.930]and what might be done
- [00:16:41.900]about human's impact on the environment.
- [00:16:44.520]We didn't want a work
- [00:16:45.580]that simply illustrated negative or apocalyptic effects
- [00:16:49.070]of this impact on the world,
- [00:16:50.880]and that aspect of resilience really drove our research.
- [00:16:54.016]What drew us to these works by Mel Chin
- [00:16:56.950]was in part their connection
- [00:16:58.440]to his larger "Revival Field" project.
- [00:17:01.300]As Nebraska is a land-grant research university,
- [00:17:04.540]we thought it was important that these artworks
- [00:17:07.210]provide a unique opportunity for students across campus
- [00:17:10.760]to see how art and science could come together
- [00:17:13.120]to create compelling projects and conversations.
- [00:17:17.150]We liked that Mel Chin's work
- [00:17:18.660]utilized and incorporated materials from the earth.
- [00:17:21.830]They're composed of soil and plant matter,
- [00:17:24.800]rather than paint and canvas.
- [00:17:27.110]Another aspect of the works that drew us to them
- [00:17:29.970]is that the "Revival Field" site is in the Midwest,
- [00:17:33.040]at Pig's Eye Landfill in St. Paul, Minnesota,
- [00:17:36.370]so this geographic proximity
- [00:17:38.190]made the work feel even more relevant to us.
- [00:17:41.090]Finally, the works are evocative.
- [00:17:43.380]They do not give away any answers right away to the viewer.
- [00:17:46.670]You must keep coming back,
- [00:17:48.250]looking more closely,
- [00:17:49.560]and viewing the artworks from different perspectives.
- [00:17:52.609]In this way,
- [00:17:53.710]Mel Chin's works allow for discussion,
- [00:17:56.160]inquiry and discovery,
- [00:17:58.170]making them invaluable
- [00:17:59.540]to the academic community on campus now
- [00:18:02.060]and in the future.
- [00:18:04.000]Both of these artworks highlight Mel Chin's focus
- [00:18:06.810]on multidisciplinary concepts that connect aesthetics
- [00:18:09.960]with social and environmental awareness.
- [00:18:13.040]They immortalize the creative and scientific research
- [00:18:15.990]that was done at "Revival Field."
- [00:18:18.000]By encasing in glass,
- [00:18:19.440]organic and inorganic materials
- [00:18:21.550]collected directly from the project site,
- [00:18:24.030]Mel Chin brings "Revival Field's" environmental
- [00:18:26.840]and artistic concerns into the context, the gallery,
- [00:18:30.420]and he demonstrates that cross-disciplinary collaborations
- [00:18:33.770]can lead to significant findings and possible solutions.
- [00:18:37.620]Moreover,
- [00:18:38.453]he shows that art is an important form of research.
- [00:18:41.528]So we at the Student Sheldon Advisory Board
- [00:18:44.640]are so excited to have acquired the two works by Mel Chin,
- [00:18:47.945]and we are grateful to him
- [00:18:49.410]for participating in today's event.
- [00:18:51.670]We look forward to the conversations
- [00:18:53.110]that will arise from the work from all corners of campus,
- [00:18:56.040]starting with the diverse perspectives
- [00:18:58.340]of the faculty presenters coming up next.
- [00:19:00.530]Thank you.
- [00:19:04.939]Molly, thank you so much.
- [00:19:07.979]I am going to now turn it over to Katie Anania,
- [00:19:11.830]who is an Assistant Professor of Art History
- [00:19:14.500]in the School of Art, Art History and Design,
- [00:19:17.480]and a Faculty Fellow
- [00:19:19.310]of The Daugherty Water for Food Institute.
- [00:19:21.740]She's currently a Tyson Scholar of American Art
- [00:19:24.760]at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
- [00:19:28.370]Katie.
- [00:19:29.559]Thank you everyone. Can you hear me okay?
- [00:19:32.040]Is the audio, does this work?
- [00:19:33.800]Okay, great.
- [00:19:35.520]Thank you so much to the Sheldon's engagement team
- [00:19:38.860]and to Mel Chin,
- [00:19:40.380]and to the Student Advisory Board for inviting me.
- [00:19:43.630]I'm so pleased to be here
- [00:19:45.280]and to share my thoughts on this extraordinary work.
- [00:19:48.340]I'm gonna share my screen now.
- [00:19:51.570]Okay.
- [00:19:52.550]Let me know if that is looking problematic for anyone.
- [00:19:57.530]These two works by Mel Chin,
- [00:20:00.810]that the Student Advisory Board
- [00:20:02.370]has recommended for the collection,
- [00:20:04.750]really got me thinking about
- [00:20:06.013]visual cultures of waste containment,
- [00:20:09.820]like how we visualize the containment of waste.
- [00:20:12.640]And also about how pictures of contaminated sites,
- [00:20:16.349]no matter where those sites are,
- [00:20:19.260]or what has contaminated them,
- [00:20:21.091]they always seem to argue
- [00:20:22.690]for the need to separate human beings
- [00:20:25.100]from the contaminated matter.
- [00:20:28.430]It feels part of this longer Cold War tradition
- [00:20:31.560]of containment.
- [00:20:33.040]This idea that contaminated matter is contaminated forever,
- [00:20:36.880]and those who are are already contaminated are other,
- [00:20:40.520]and they must be separate.
- [00:20:42.645]But for today I was asked,
- [00:20:44.952]how might looking at and engaging with this kind of artwork
- [00:20:50.570]impact students and scholars in art and art history,
- [00:20:54.170]especially in thinking about traditions
- [00:20:56.450]of environmental and ecological art.
- [00:20:59.060]So it's kind of working against the grain
- [00:21:01.420]of this ethos of separation,
- [00:21:03.621]that I wanna assemble all these components
- [00:21:06.090]of this work together.
- [00:21:07.970]These two works are a small piece, you know,
- [00:21:10.740]a test sample themselves really,
- [00:21:12.660]of this larger project on a Superfund site
- [00:21:15.980]that includes the plants, the fence,
- [00:21:18.710]and all the planning documents that went into the work.
- [00:21:22.013]With these two works,
- [00:21:23.745]we find ourselves facing the soil
- [00:21:26.880]and the plants as main characters,
- [00:21:29.490]preserved specimens
- [00:21:30.650]that have cycled through their role in the project,
- [00:21:33.382]and then whose contributions
- [00:21:34.792]are captured and imaged after the fact.
- [00:21:37.710]You know,
- [00:21:38.878]there are some notes on the sides of the works
- [00:21:39.820]that tell us about the contamination.
- [00:21:42.970]Among the plants not pictured, by the way,
- [00:21:45.510]is Zea mays or American sweet corn,
- [00:21:48.030]a very common agricultural product in the Midwest,
- [00:21:50.965]which in addition to its capacity
- [00:21:53.240]as a hyperaccumulator for pollution,
- [00:21:55.690]is also an incredibly prolific grower
- [00:21:58.430]and had numerous deities and names for it
- [00:22:02.670]in pre-Columbian societies.
- [00:22:05.270]The plant that is in the Sheldon's acquisition
- [00:22:08.340]is the Thlaspi caerulescens plant.
- [00:22:13.169]This member of the Brassica family
- [00:22:15.520]has done a sculpting action on the earth,
- [00:22:19.440]as Mel Chin calls it.
- [00:22:21.470]But this sculpting action happens sub-visibly,
- [00:22:24.800]almost magically.
- [00:22:26.632]I'm sorry. I lost my place guys, sorry.
- [00:22:31.080]Sub-visibly, almost magically inside the soil,
- [00:22:36.055]pressed into a thin layer
- [00:22:39.020]between the pieces of glass inside the frame.
- [00:22:41.780]Contained, as long as visitors and researchers
- [00:22:44.910]behave themselves and don't break the glass.
- [00:22:47.590]This plant that performs this wondrous action
- [00:22:50.780]and the soil that's altered it,
- [00:22:52.887]all these things are pressed inside this glass matrix,
- [00:22:56.880]set inside a diagram that both abstracts the soil site
- [00:23:01.240]and also replicates it in miniature.
- [00:23:04.210]Of course, this makes me think of the French artist,
- [00:23:06.500]Marcel Duchamp's work,
- [00:23:07.887]"The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even."
- [00:23:11.080]This work was a monument to Duchamp's interest
- [00:23:14.440]in scientific practices in the early 20th century.
- [00:23:17.920]In creating this large painting on glass,
- [00:23:20.180]Duchamp tried to leave behind
- [00:23:21.960]the wild emotional world of avant garde art,
- [00:23:25.460]and become instead a scientist
- [00:23:27.610]with rigorous standards in practices for his art.
- [00:23:30.920]And that's why this work also looks like a specimen,
- [00:23:34.610]also kind of like a film still.
- [00:23:37.080]So what becomes clear here,
- [00:23:38.639]is that both science and art have a rich array
- [00:23:42.010]of established practices for capturing the interactions
- [00:23:45.330]between living organisms and their habitat.
- [00:23:48.470]In fact, prior to industrialization,
- [00:23:51.012]artworks were a much more direct register
- [00:23:54.700]of these kinds of interactions.
- [00:23:56.910]Pigments were sourced from plants and precious minerals.
- [00:24:00.649]Canvases and other backdrops were made of natural materials.
- [00:24:05.650]And I think this is one of the primary forms of inspiration
- [00:24:07.971]that we can take from Chin's work as well.
- [00:24:11.990]For Mel Chin, dead matter doesn't really exist.
- [00:24:16.700]The dead or spent remains of one thing
- [00:24:20.290]are always ready to be transfigured and to find new form.
- [00:24:24.370]This work from 1975, "Vertical Palette",
- [00:24:27.070]maps this concept in terms of art making,
- [00:24:29.910]chemistry and metaphysics.
- [00:24:32.330]For this work,
- [00:24:33.163]Chin placed five jars in a handmade wooden rack.
- [00:24:36.273]Inside each jar is a material
- [00:24:39.040]that corresponds to the Chinese theory
- [00:24:41.140]of the five elements.
- [00:24:42.810]Water at the top, wood,
- [00:24:45.520]then fire or smoke,
- [00:24:47.720]earth and metal, or ground-up lead.
- [00:24:51.055]In traditional Chinese painting,
- [00:24:53.290]even the painter's tool
- [00:24:54.950]should correspond to these materials.
- [00:24:57.260]So charred, burnt or exhumed matter always finds new life
- [00:25:02.020]when the artist mixes it into pigment.
- [00:25:04.766]In fact, we could say more broadly
- [00:25:07.714]that art has been central to these revolutionary ideas
- [00:25:11.850]for how to reuse and recirculate matter for centuries.
- [00:25:15.710]Take the Argentine artist Marta Minujín for instance,
- [00:25:20.100]who obtained authorization
- [00:25:21.670]from the government of Peru in 1976,
- [00:25:24.280]to extract 65 pounds of soil
- [00:25:26.900]from the Ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu.
- [00:25:29.760]She took it home with her to Buenos Aires.
- [00:25:32.390]She built a giant nest out of part of the dirt,
- [00:25:35.210]which you see on the right.
- [00:25:36.560]And she sent small portions of the rest of the dirt
- [00:25:39.030]to her friends in the mail.
- [00:25:40.890]The friends then sent her packages of their own local soils,
- [00:25:44.490]which she returned to Machu Picchu in a private ceremony
- [00:25:47.900]that was also informed by a scientific collaboration
- [00:25:50.810]in her region.
- [00:25:52.337]Katie?
- [00:25:53.380]Yes.
- [00:25:54.213]Are you able to share your slides on your computer please?
- [00:25:56.560]I'm not sure if that's showing for everybody.
- [00:25:58.950]Oh, let's see.
- [00:26:01.410]I'm gonna stop the share
- [00:26:02.720]because I've been sharing and flipping through.
- [00:26:05.060]Apologies everyone.
- [00:26:06.569]No problem.
- [00:26:07.633]All right, let's try to get this started again.
- [00:26:09.639]So it says I'm sharing my screen.
- [00:26:11.098]Can everyone see?
- [00:26:12.189]Yep, we can see the little pod now.
- [00:26:13.710]Oh, okay great. All right.
- [00:26:15.190]Well, it should be even better with visual aids.
- [00:26:17.847]Look at this.
- [00:26:18.942](audience member laughs)
- [00:26:24.770]Here we go.
- [00:26:26.418]Or, thinking of Ana Mendieta,
- [00:26:27.930]who in her photographic series, "Siluetas",
- [00:26:31.100]buried her own body
- [00:26:32.630]under piles of earth and plant matter.
- [00:26:35.700]This image from the Sheldon's collection,
- [00:26:37.670]called "Tumba" or "Tomb",
- [00:26:39.480]shows the ephemeral and vulnerable nature of the human body
- [00:26:43.390]as measured against natural material,
- [00:26:45.900]while the tiny plant on top of the mound
- [00:26:48.360]gestures toward a regenerative future.
- [00:26:51.670]Still others,
- [00:26:52.550]like Agnes Denes' one acre project, "Wheatfield,"
- [00:26:55.830]which she constructed
- [00:26:56.810]in New York City's Battery Park in 1982,
- [00:27:00.080]used plant cultivation to challenge the way
- [00:27:02.650]that we organize human habitats like cities,
- [00:27:05.600]which are generally a long truck ride
- [00:27:07.810]away from most farms.
- [00:27:10.310]In installing "Wheatfield" on top of a landfill
- [00:27:13.410]just outside Battery Park,
- [00:27:15.160]Agnes Denes drew those worlds closer together.
- [00:27:18.177]The 20th century has seen an explosion
- [00:27:21.642]of research-based projects like "Revival Field",
- [00:27:24.713]that use STEAM research methods.
- [00:27:30.140]These projects,
- [00:27:31.490]like the Future Farmers' social practice work,
- [00:27:33.937]"Soil Kitchen",
- [00:27:35.820]explored the class and racialized dimensions
- [00:27:38.700]of polluted brownfields.
- [00:27:40.810]The collective installed a cafe next to a brownfield
- [00:27:44.390]in a Central Pennsylvania neighborhood.
- [00:27:47.000]Residents could bring soil samples from their home,
- [00:27:49.760]to be tested in exchange for free soup.
- [00:27:53.000]Works like this,
- [00:27:54.180]which measured humanity's proximity to toxins,
- [00:27:58.020]or like "Revival Field",
- [00:27:59.630]which treat plant life as a mechanism for toxic remediation,
- [00:28:03.951]really help us get a clearer view of how we might understand
- [00:28:08.330]human natural relationships differently.
- [00:28:11.380]What defines life or liveness?
- [00:28:14.790]How might we take the current conditions
- [00:28:16.960]in which we find ourselves?
- [00:28:18.390]You know, in this moment where cleaning up messes
- [00:28:21.130]is this massive, enormous task in STEM fields,
- [00:28:25.751]and turn those conditions into something
- [00:28:28.170]fertile, creative and lively,
- [00:28:30.900]even when our most familiar sources
- [00:28:33.138]of money or other resources fail.
- [00:28:38.410]How are bodies vulnerable and how are they resilient?
- [00:28:42.288]Mel Chin's work sparks these questions and more,
- [00:28:46.510]and we look forward to helping build its legacy
- [00:28:49.920]in the Sheldon's collection.
- [00:28:51.520]Thank you.
- [00:28:53.930]Katie.
- [00:28:54.860]Wondered if you could flip through the slides
- [00:28:57.440]from the beginning,
- [00:28:58.410]since I don't think everyone
- [00:29:00.130]was able to see all of the slides.
- [00:29:03.170]Yeah. I think if we have time, I'd be happy to.
- [00:29:06.730]Let me pop this up and we'll make sure
- [00:29:08.919]that everyone can see it from the beginning.
- [00:29:10.980]I'll go all the way back.
- [00:29:12.480]I'm scrolling through it for you, re-sharing.
- [00:29:16.200]Okay.
- [00:29:19.250]All right.
- [00:29:20.910]So this is the Nevada test site.
- [00:29:29.060]And the Marcel Duchamp large glass.
- [00:29:32.030]And I'm not sure when we all caught up to each other.
- [00:29:37.140]Oh yes, the Marta Minujin,
- [00:29:39.129]"Comunicando con tierra,"
- [00:29:40.700]communicating with the earth.
- [00:29:43.602]There's Mel Chin's "Vertical Palette",
- [00:29:46.951]with the five Chinese elements inside.
- [00:29:50.538]And then that's the end.
- [00:29:53.335]Apologies everybody.
- [00:29:54.855]Thanks so much.
- [00:29:59.230]I am now going to turn this over to Xu Li,
- [00:30:03.670]who's a Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Programs
- [00:30:07.260]of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- [00:30:09.710]in the College of Engineering,
- [00:30:11.340]and a Faculty Fellow
- [00:30:12.560]of The Daugherty Water for Food Institute.
- [00:30:14.970]He is also a Professor of Animal Science by courtesy.
- [00:30:19.870]Welcome Professor Xu.
- [00:30:21.770]Professor Li, excuse me.
- [00:30:23.809]Thank you.
- [00:30:27.320]And can you see my slides okay? Great.
- [00:30:32.321]Good evening, everyone.
- [00:30:34.350]Thanks for the opportunity to speak at the event.
- [00:30:37.070]I want to use the next few minutes
- [00:30:39.490]to give you some technical background
- [00:30:41.330]about the pollutant and the technology,
- [00:30:43.950]and also share some of the thoughts
- [00:30:45.590]about how arts and engineering can be connected.
- [00:30:51.920]So cadmium was one of the pollutant in the soil,
- [00:30:55.585]and that belongs to one class of pollutant
- [00:31:00.023]called heavy metals.
- [00:31:02.395]And heavy metals are metallic elements
- [00:31:04.440]with a relatively high density.
- [00:31:06.407]And there are different kinds of heavy metals.
- [00:31:08.600]Some of the heavy metals
- [00:31:09.960]actually can be essential elements for plant growth,
- [00:31:13.369]like copper and iron.
- [00:31:15.720]But there are also other heavy metals
- [00:31:17.550]like cadmium and arsenic,
- [00:31:20.280]those are non-essential for plants,
- [00:31:22.350]and also at high concentrations can be toxic to plants.
- [00:31:26.720]All those heavy metals
- [00:31:27.690]are naturally occurring in the environment.
- [00:31:29.687]And the map shown here is from USGS,
- [00:31:32.630]it shows the arsenic levels in water samples
- [00:31:36.210]collected across the states,
- [00:31:38.470]and some of the red spots highlight some of the areas
- [00:31:41.167]where there's naturally higher arsenic concentrations.
- [00:31:45.160]And also, those heavy metals
- [00:31:46.810]can be introduced into the environment
- [00:31:48.720]through human activities,
- [00:31:50.520]for example,
- [00:31:51.353]disposal of waste water from the oil and gas industry,
- [00:31:54.399]and disposal of waste from the metal mining,
- [00:31:57.840]and even the use of phosphorus fertilizers.
- [00:32:01.847]Cadmium, like other heavy metals,
- [00:32:05.550]it also occurs naturally.
- [00:32:07.830]Cadmium actually make up to 0.1 part per million
- [00:32:12.430]of the Earth's crust.
- [00:32:14.220]And cadmium is produced mainly as the byproduct
- [00:32:17.360]from the mining and a refining process
- [00:32:20.200]of the ores of another metal, zinc.
- [00:32:23.614]And about 86% of all the cadmium produced
- [00:32:27.680]is used to manufacture nickel-cadmium batteries,
- [00:32:32.200]so like the picture shows here.
- [00:32:34.240]When we dispose those batteries in trash
- [00:32:39.210]they move to the landfills.
- [00:32:40.950]After the outer surface is disintegrated,
- [00:32:43.708]cadmium and nickel may be released into the environment.
- [00:32:48.870]And the contamination site illustrated in Mel Chin's work
- [00:32:53.450]is from the Pig's Eye Landfill in Minnesota,
- [00:32:57.010]and that is the Superfund site located near St. Paul.
- [00:33:01.240]And that particular place contains contaminants,
- [00:33:03.690]including heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury.
- [00:33:09.120]And at one point,
- [00:33:09.953]that is the largest unpermitted dump site
- [00:33:13.210]in the state of Minnesota.
- [00:33:15.720]Those heavy metals not only polluted the soil,
- [00:33:18.911]but it also has the potential to contaminate
- [00:33:21.739]the surface water bodies around the site.
- [00:33:27.340]The reason people care about heavy metals in soil
- [00:33:30.210]is because they could have
- [00:33:31.923]negative environmental and health impacts.
- [00:33:36.090]Those heavy metals,
- [00:33:37.395]they tend to persist in soil for a very long time.
- [00:33:41.807]At higher concentrations,
- [00:33:44.040]those heavy metals can have a severe impact
- [00:33:48.556]on the growth of crops.
- [00:33:50.897]Even at the lower concentrations,
- [00:33:52.900]even though plants can survive,
- [00:33:55.560]but those heavy metals may accumulate in the plants,
- [00:33:58.550]as shown in this figure.
- [00:34:00.140]This shows if the rice crop is planted in the soil,
- [00:34:04.600]polluted with heavy metals,
- [00:34:06.560]then those heavy metals may accumulate in the rice green,
- [00:34:09.630]and then the rice green will enter the food chains
- [00:34:12.846]and eventually accumulate in the body of human and animals.
- [00:34:22.034]So there are different technologies
- [00:34:24.190]that can mitigate heavy metals in soil.
- [00:34:27.090]A soil incineration has been a technique
- [00:34:29.300]that's used high temperatures to destroy pollutants in soil,
- [00:34:33.480]but the downside of this technology
- [00:34:35.980]is it cause irreversible changes to soil
- [00:34:38.620]and the soil coming out of incineration
- [00:34:42.370]may no longer be suitable for agricultural use.
- [00:34:46.530]And landfill and soil washing,
- [00:34:48.809]they merely move the polluted soil
- [00:34:52.080]from one location to another,
- [00:34:54.130]or move the pollutant from one face of soil to another face,
- [00:34:58.770]which is the wash water.
- [00:35:00.520]And both technologies can produce secondary pollutions.
- [00:35:04.750]And compared to those technologies we mentioned earlier,
- [00:35:09.340]phytoremediation is a cost-effective approach.
- [00:35:13.110]And essentially, it's the solar energy
- [00:35:15.110]that's powered the process,
- [00:35:17.956]and it can be widely applied to different soil types,
- [00:35:21.370]and it can be quite efficient.
- [00:35:23.430]It can even extract heavy metals
- [00:35:25.260]at relatively low concentrations from soil.
- [00:35:29.067]And also because it involves the use of plant,
- [00:35:31.970]it's considered an environmentally friendly technology.
- [00:35:36.300]So during phytoremediation,
- [00:35:38.410]the plants will absorb those pollutants in soil
- [00:35:41.023]through their roots.
- [00:35:43.220]For a lot of the plants,
- [00:35:44.100]they may not look big above soil,
- [00:35:46.450]but they can have large root systems
- [00:35:48.470]extend deep and wide underneath the soil surface.
- [00:35:52.391]When the root extends into the soil matrix,
- [00:35:55.100]it will establish something
- [00:35:56.083]called the rhizosphere ecosystems.
- [00:35:59.264]And the processes that happens in the rhizosphere soil
- [00:36:02.269]can really help the plant accumulate heavy metals.
- [00:36:05.344]Once heavy metals gets into the root,
- [00:36:08.201]they can be transported from the roots
- [00:36:11.860]to the shoots of the plant,
- [00:36:14.884]or across the cellular membrane of the plant.
- [00:36:20.040]On this last slide.
- [00:36:21.730]I kind of want to show
- [00:36:23.010]some of the connections between arts and engineering.
- [00:36:25.410]And arts and engineering are very different disciplines,
- [00:36:28.860]but there are places where they can be connected.
- [00:36:32.981]For folks who live in Lincoln,
- [00:36:35.592]whenever you pass 27th street,
- [00:36:37.910]you may notice there's those ball-shaped structures
- [00:36:40.729]near the side of the highway bridge, yes.
- [00:36:46.670]And those structures actually is used to collect the biogas
- [00:36:50.150]from the waste-water treatment process.
- [00:36:53.090]The biogas is actually a form of renewable energy
- [00:36:56.337]that can be used to generate electricity and generate heat.
- [00:37:00.960]So a few years ago,
- [00:37:02.070]all you can see would be these gray structures.
- [00:37:05.140]And a few years ago,
- [00:37:06.560]the treatment facilities decided to paint the structure
- [00:37:10.048]and has the word Lincoln renew,
- [00:37:12.980]and also paint those leaf-shape paint
- [00:37:19.310]onto the structure,
- [00:37:21.070]and really brings out the renewable nature
- [00:37:23.490]of the biogas that is being stored in the structure.
- [00:37:28.380]And also,
- [00:37:29.213]arts can be used to illustrate engineering processes,
- [00:37:32.990]like the one shown in Mel Chin's work.
- [00:37:35.557]And when I look at this art piece in the Sheldon museum,
- [00:37:40.050]if you look really closely we can see the close association
- [00:37:43.190]between the soil particles in the root of the plant,
- [00:37:46.890]that really kind of illustrates
- [00:37:48.470]why the root plants would be effective,
- [00:37:51.190]accumulating the pollutant from the soil particles
- [00:37:54.960]and hyperaccumulate inside the plant.
- [00:37:58.260]And also, artworks can help improve the awareness.
- [00:38:02.224]Last semester when the Sheldon museum
- [00:38:05.260]had the "Nature of Waste" exhibit,
- [00:38:07.970]I brought my engineering students to the museum,
- [00:38:10.990]and engineering students were really able to see
- [00:38:13.620]how artists can convert some of the waste into art piece,
- [00:38:18.590]and bring out the message
- [00:38:22.588]of environmental conservation and sustainability.
- [00:38:28.157]And with that, I will stop sharing.
- [00:38:31.835]Thank you.
- [00:38:34.600]Thank you, Professor Li.
- [00:38:36.728]We have one more faculty member for another perspective.
- [00:38:41.960]So delighted to welcome Sabrina Russo,
- [00:38:45.700]a Professor of Biological Sciences
- [00:38:47.930]in the School of Biological Sciences,
- [00:38:50.460]director of the Russo Lab,
- [00:38:52.020]and a member of the Center for Plant Science Innovation.
- [00:38:57.250]Good evening, everyone.
- [00:38:58.860]And thank you very much for this invitation.
- [00:39:03.200]It's really, truly a great honor and pleasure
- [00:39:06.530]to be able to share my perspectives as a plant biologist
- [00:39:09.802]on these remarkable works of art by Mel Chin
- [00:39:13.570]that were recently acquired by the Sheldon Museum of Art.
- [00:39:19.054]Are these advancing? Yes? Good. (laughs)
- [00:39:23.260]All right.
- [00:39:24.440]First of all,
- [00:39:25.273]I just wanted to mention a number of features struck me
- [00:39:28.600]when I first observed these art pieces.
- [00:39:31.480]But most of all,
- [00:39:32.313]I was struck by the choice
- [00:39:34.420]of the circular representation of the soil.
- [00:39:37.691]And to me, the choice of a circle
- [00:39:40.010]resembles the spherical shape of the planet earth.
- [00:39:43.497]And the circle can also be seen
- [00:39:46.020]to symbolize cycles and feedback
- [00:39:48.740]that are very important in the natural world.
- [00:39:52.530]And a point there is that there is a feedback
- [00:39:54.890]between what we as humans do to the earth,
- [00:39:58.410]and what it in turn does to us.
- [00:40:02.970]Another striking feature to me is that Mr. Chin
- [00:40:06.070]has chosen to place the plants
- [00:40:08.455]at the center of the earth and circle,
- [00:40:10.950]which I view also as meaningful,
- [00:40:13.610]in that plants are truly at the center
- [00:40:15.970]of nearly all life on earth.
- [00:40:19.180]And to illustrate that point,
- [00:40:20.870]we can explore how plants have shaped Earth's environment.
- [00:40:25.111]So over 3 billion years ago,
- [00:40:27.630]the evolution of oxygen-producing photosynthetic organisms
- [00:40:31.833]began to dramatically change the Earth's atmosphere,
- [00:40:35.451]and that's shown here in this kind of complicated timeline
- [00:40:38.870]that shows different models
- [00:40:40.500]for how the concentration of the Earth's oxygen
- [00:40:44.990]in the Earth's atmosphere changed,
- [00:40:47.370]with respect to time,
- [00:40:49.095]in billions of years ago,
- [00:40:51.520]where the zero on the X axis shows the present time.
- [00:40:56.516]And so photosynthesis, as you all may know,
- [00:41:01.610]is the biochemical process
- [00:41:03.300]whereby plants convert atmospheric carbon dioxide
- [00:41:07.370]into sugars that they use for energy,
- [00:41:10.290]but then also as building blocks
- [00:41:12.420]for constructing their tissues.
- [00:41:14.620]And this process of photosynthesis releases oxygen,
- [00:41:18.710]gaseous oxygen, into the atmosphere as a byproduct.
- [00:41:22.757]And so the evolution and growth
- [00:41:25.360]of these photosynthetic organisms
- [00:41:27.240]began what is known as the great oxidation event,
- [00:41:30.680]3 billion years ago.
- [00:41:32.500]And this massive increase
- [00:41:34.760]in the oxygen concentration in Earth's atmosphere
- [00:41:37.904]started, and was continued later,
- [00:41:41.060]about 480 million years ago,
- [00:41:43.589]when the land plants diversified.
- [00:41:47.650]And this ultimately set the stage
- [00:41:50.270]for the evolution of complex oxygen-breathing animals
- [00:41:54.610]such as ourselves.
- [00:41:59.050]So while photosynthetic organisms
- [00:42:01.150]have paved the way, ultimately,
- [00:42:03.060]for the evolution of homosapiens on earth,
- [00:42:06.370]humanity is now altering earth
- [00:42:08.510]in ways that both increase our dependence on plants,
- [00:42:12.226]and that make earth inhospitable to plants.
- [00:42:16.220]So for example, by cutting down forests
- [00:42:18.540]and other natural perennial vegetation,
- [00:42:21.340]and by altering soil systems,
- [00:42:23.240]we are reducing Earth's capacity
- [00:42:25.360]to absorb the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide
- [00:42:28.980]that human activities are releasing into the atmosphere.
- [00:42:34.880]And humanity is transforming earth in many ways.
- [00:42:38.540]The carbon dioxide
- [00:42:39.710]and other greenhouse gases that we produce,
- [00:42:42.480]as has been pointed out, are waste.
- [00:42:45.100]But we produce many other forms of waste,
- [00:42:47.824]such as the heavy metals that are in the soil
- [00:42:51.138]of the Pig's Eye hazardous waste landfill in Minnesota,
- [00:42:55.320]which is the site
- [00:42:57.063]of Mr. Chin's art installation "Revival Field",
- [00:42:59.660]from which materials for these beautiful art pieces
- [00:43:03.540]have been sourced.
- [00:43:05.860]And the soil of the "Revival Field"
- [00:43:08.100]has high concentrations of cadmium and zinc,
- [00:43:11.820]which are both toxic heavy metals.
- [00:43:16.020]And so in these art pieces,
- [00:43:17.870]we once again see the centrality of plants,
- [00:43:21.120]depicted both in Mr. Chin's vision,
- [00:43:24.973]and also reflected in nature.
- [00:43:27.040]So here at the center is Thlaspi caerulescens,
- [00:43:31.360]shown beautifully dried and pressed.
- [00:43:33.780]And this is a plant species
- [00:43:36.130]in the mustard or Brassicaceae family.
- [00:43:39.109]It is a heavy metal hyperaccumulator,
- [00:43:42.700]so that means it can grow,
- [00:43:44.110]survive and reproduce quite well
- [00:43:46.530]in soils that have elevated concentrations of heavy metals
- [00:43:50.780]that are intolerable to most plants.
- [00:43:53.610]And there's currently great interest
- [00:43:55.960]in these heavy metal hyperaccumulating species,
- [00:43:58.804]because of this growing problem
- [00:44:00.760]of soil contamination with heavy metals,
- [00:44:03.450]and the need for feasible
- [00:44:05.240]and economical remediation options.
- [00:44:10.730]So, many metals are required by plants and by people
- [00:44:14.260]as micronutrients,
- [00:44:16.300]but generally only in very small quantities.
- [00:44:19.550]And so above a certain threshold
- [00:44:21.300]these metals become toxic,
- [00:44:23.390]by interfering with the functioning of enzymes
- [00:44:26.020]that regulate life's metabolic processes.
- [00:44:29.277]What's interesting
- [00:44:30.840]is that heavy metal hyperaccumulating plant species
- [00:44:35.230]have evolved special molecular mechanisms,
- [00:44:38.490]that are shown here in this kind of complex conceptual model
- [00:44:42.570]from a recent paper on the topic.
- [00:44:44.880]And these mechanisms allow the plants
- [00:44:47.550]to take up these metals and sequester them in their tissues.
- [00:44:53.410]So often this involves chelation of the heavy metal,
- [00:44:57.458]which allows the plant to take it into the cell
- [00:45:00.210]and also to transport it from the soil into the roots,
- [00:45:04.620]and then up above ground into the stem and into the leaves.
- [00:45:09.750]And in addition,
- [00:45:10.800]this also involves very specialized protein transporters
- [00:45:14.340]that sit in the cell membranes
- [00:45:16.390]and act kind of like doorways,
- [00:45:19.160]shuttling these chelated metals into various places.
- [00:45:27.456]So appreciation of Thlaspi caerulescen
- [00:45:30.850]as a heavy metal hyperaccumulator
- [00:45:32.800]dates back to the mid 1800s,
- [00:45:35.710]when it was found growing on very zinc-rich soils in Europe.
- [00:45:40.360]And then also to have foliar concentrations of zinc
- [00:45:43.610]as high as 18% by dry weight,
- [00:45:46.200]which is actually quite high
- [00:45:47.470]when you consider that usually plant leaves
- [00:45:51.100]contain about 40% carbon,
- [00:45:53.000]which the main element that comprises them.
- [00:45:58.041]And to date, about 400 plant species,
- [00:46:01.419]belonging to a wide range of plant families,
- [00:46:04.190]have been reported as heavy metal hyperaccumulators.
- [00:46:08.320]But even though that number seems kind of large,
- [00:46:11.430]this capacity for hyperaccumulation is actually quite rare,
- [00:46:15.350]as these 400 species only comprise less than about 0.2%
- [00:46:20.030]of all flowering plant species.
- [00:46:24.832]So while the "Revival Field" is a very unnatural site,
- [00:46:29.628]heavy metal-tolerant and hyperaccumulating plant species
- [00:46:33.870]have evolved in soils
- [00:46:35.750]that are naturally high in heavy metals,
- [00:46:38.470]and some of these are known as serpentine soils.
- [00:46:41.760]So these serpentine soils
- [00:46:43.330]have very high concentrations of heavy metals
- [00:46:46.140]chromium, iron, cobalt, and nickel,
- [00:46:49.204]and as a result they're very shallow and infertile
- [00:46:53.000]and support only very sparse vegetation,
- [00:46:55.390]which you can see
- [00:46:56.840]when you compare the non-serpentine soil
- [00:46:59.720]here in this image in panel A,
- [00:47:02.050]the vegetation growing on it
- [00:47:03.690]compared to the vegetation growing in panel B,
- [00:47:07.750]which is on a serpentine soil.
- [00:47:11.020]And these types of unusual soils
- [00:47:13.020]have resulted in the evolution
- [00:47:14.680]of what are called edaphic endemics,
- [00:47:17.540]which are plant species
- [00:47:18.680]that are principally found only on particular soil types.
- [00:47:23.131]And the effect of serpentine soils on plant diversity
- [00:47:26.800]is actually quite large.
- [00:47:28.100]And in California,
- [00:47:29.540]where these images were taken
- [00:47:30.940]and where a lot of work has been done on serpentine soils,
- [00:47:34.048]the serpentine soils only comprise less than 1%
- [00:47:37.900]of the state's land area,
- [00:47:39.810]but the serpentine endemic plant species
- [00:47:42.360]make up about 10% of California's flora.
- [00:47:47.840]And these patterns are also observed at the global scale.
- [00:47:52.040]So more than half
- [00:47:53.650]of the world's plant biodiversity hotspots,
- [00:47:56.530]that are shown here in the blue shading,
- [00:47:58.800]are associated with these types of unusual soils,
- [00:48:03.000]such serpentine soils,
- [00:48:05.467]the locations of which are shown by these black dots.
- [00:48:12.530]So in these respects,
- [00:48:13.870]photosynthetic organisms, including plants,
- [00:48:16.490]are truly at the center of our existence,
- [00:48:19.345]as we owe our very origin
- [00:48:21.430]and continued life on earth to them.
- [00:48:23.860]And Mel Chin's art pieces
- [00:48:26.040]engender contemplation of the relationship of humanity
- [00:48:29.670]to the diversity of life on earth,
- [00:48:32.070]and also illustrate how many disciplines intersect
- [00:48:34.484]in the interpretation of these art pieces.
- [00:48:43.300]Thank you so much, Professor Russo.
- [00:48:47.374]Really fascinating
- [00:48:49.070]to hear all of the different perspectives.
- [00:48:51.980]And I'll say that this program is our attempt,
- [00:48:54.305]we wanted to try something new.
- [00:48:57.100]Our Student Advisory Board members
- [00:48:59.564]were really wanting to take a work of art
- [00:49:03.650]and use it as a way to facilitate dialogue
- [00:49:07.100]and inquiry across disciplines,
- [00:49:09.590]so using this program as a demonstration
- [00:49:13.410]of how that really truly is possible.
- [00:49:16.850]Want to give you, Mr. Chin, a moment
- [00:49:20.760]if you would like to respond to anything
- [00:49:22.730]that was just presented,
- [00:49:24.660]raised by Molly or professors Anania, Li and Russo,
- [00:49:29.910]before we open it up to audience questions.
- [00:49:35.488]Dig it.
- [00:49:36.920]All right. All right.
- [00:49:37.850]Dig it. Yeah.
- [00:49:38.683]Soil, plant, okay.
- [00:49:40.740]Yeah.
- [00:49:42.100]One thing that's important to talk about,
- [00:49:44.290]how I thought about this work as an active project.
- [00:49:47.465]We see art always being relegated to bringing awareness,
- [00:49:52.860]which it should do,
- [00:49:53.730]and certainly the pieces that you have do that.
- [00:49:57.180]But part of the larger project
- [00:49:58.550]was actually to create science, you know?
- [00:50:02.010]And so I had this kind of attitude
- [00:50:04.650]when people would ask me
- [00:50:06.670]was "Revival Field", the bigger project, art?
- [00:50:09.460]I knew there was adversity.
- [00:50:12.260]I would say, "No it's science."
- [00:50:13.940]And when they would say, "Is it science?"
- [00:50:16.220]I would say, "No it's art."
- [00:50:17.410]Because I shape-shifted
- [00:50:19.860]according to the needs of progressing the data
- [00:50:24.097]and understanding of this work.
- [00:50:28.120]I also really appreciate that the breakdowns
- [00:50:30.690]that all three scholars did
- [00:50:32.550]from historic to scientific kind of realities
- [00:50:38.380]that I did study at.
- [00:50:40.090]Because part of this was important.
- [00:50:43.944]To create the piece,
- [00:50:45.980]I was driven by this poet dimension that would push me,
- [00:50:51.179]even when I was rejected from the polluters
- [00:50:54.140]and told I could not work on the land.
- [00:50:57.040]And could not hear no,
- [00:50:58.590]'cause the power of the possibility of this was so profound.
- [00:51:04.463]And then the other aspect
- [00:51:06.400]was the pragmatism that was demanded.
- [00:51:09.320]If I'm going to be doing this in a site
- [00:51:11.680]that has potentiality for danger to a person,
- [00:51:16.619]then it's not just my protection,
- [00:51:19.610]but it's almost like,
- [00:51:20.520]how can we do something that is responsible?
- [00:51:24.760]And therefore, working with scientists,
- [00:51:27.190]I love working with scientists
- [00:51:28.410]'cause we could find a way where, with Dr. Chaney,
- [00:51:30.950]we had to harvest the plants very carefully
- [00:51:34.529]to send back to the laboratory
- [00:51:36.870]so they could be assayed,
- [00:51:38.220]to assay, I don't know the word.
- [00:51:40.700]English. Molly, help me.
- [00:51:42.550]So that it would be properly done. You know?
- [00:51:45.800]So this is where "Revival Field" might be slightly different
- [00:51:50.370]from just tackling formality of a shape or image,
- [00:51:55.340]it was the unseen parts are so important.
- [00:52:00.620]It's like, what did it accomplish?
- [00:52:03.120]I think finally, I love this focus on the dirt,
- [00:52:06.160]'cause that's the other side, or the soil,
- [00:52:08.600]because I kinda paraphrase a lot, James Baldwin's idea,
- [00:52:13.750]that the idea of art or the concept of art
- [00:52:17.345]is to unearth the questions
- [00:52:20.081]that are buried within the answers.
- [00:52:22.810]And I think that kind of vision
- [00:52:25.614]helped drive a project like this.
- [00:52:29.410]And I think that if you look at these pieces,
- [00:52:33.240]'cause it's not the whole project,
- [00:52:34.540]I hope that art can be a catalytic structure
- [00:52:38.868]to lead you into the research.
- [00:52:40.780]If not into art,
- [00:52:41.810]it can lead you into science and history
- [00:52:45.450]that was so eloquently presented.
- [00:52:48.110]So, there you go.
- [00:52:50.170]In other words, I dug what you said and y'all cool.
- [00:52:54.560]But y'all can come back at me any way you want, okay?
- [00:52:57.620]We're friends. (laughs)
- [00:53:01.273]We actually have a question from the chat
- [00:53:03.480]to get us started.
- [00:53:04.410]So Jenny Schlossmann asks,
- [00:53:06.550]did Mel Chin look at herbarium samples
- [00:53:08.760]to get an idea of how to exhibit the plants and the soil,
- [00:53:11.640]specifically the way it was pressed between the glass?
- [00:53:15.744]Absolutely.
- [00:53:17.142]Yeah. You have to open your eyes and be informed.
- [00:53:20.410]And in fact, I looked at not only herbarium samples,
- [00:53:22.910]I was looking for other types that may be hyperaccumulators
- [00:53:27.490]to help the scientists.
- [00:53:29.758]That was because some of the original Thlaspi specimens
- [00:53:32.841]were found in the 1870s, I think.
- [00:53:35.150]And so I did not only that,
- [00:53:38.450]I would make heavy metal points,
- [00:53:42.220]or zinc and cadmium,
- [00:53:43.460]'cause zinc and cadmium
- [00:53:44.800]are commonly found together in the waste field,
- [00:53:48.582]and make metal point drawings of the actual plant
- [00:53:52.320]using images of herbarium samples.
- [00:53:55.690]I didn't present those,
- [00:53:57.140]but that was something else I would do,
- [00:53:58.740]and sometimes put a nugget of the actual heavy metal
- [00:54:01.820]floating above it,
- [00:54:04.086]to again, provoke more questions.
- [00:54:05.850]So yes,
- [00:54:07.470]there was a lot of plant cray-cray attitude on my part,
- [00:54:12.568]not looking at art history books,
- [00:54:14.640]but looking at biological specimens, herbarium samples.
- [00:54:21.992]We have another question from Moneal.
- [00:54:25.130]What solutions may have been revealed
- [00:54:26.930]by "Revival Fields" in construction
- [00:54:29.300]that can address issues in a state like Nebraska,
- [00:54:31.660]which has a lot of soil mitigation issues as well.
- [00:54:35.540]You know, "Revival Field" was very specific.
- [00:54:40.480]It was testing Thlaspi
- [00:54:42.694]as a particular zinc and cadmium collector.
- [00:54:46.090]By the way, zinc is good for our bodies,
- [00:54:48.180]but I'd love the biologists,
- [00:54:50.540]and botanists and scientists can confirm
- [00:54:53.910]that it is terrible for plants.
- [00:54:55.920]Zinc can be highly destructive for life of plants.
- [00:54:59.170]So in other words, one can break another.
- [00:55:02.570]You know, I always say that when you create an idea
- [00:55:07.020]that has this poetic potential
- [00:55:08.660]to be careful as well,
- [00:55:10.400]to then rely on science.
- [00:55:12.650]To really understand the test, the soil
- [00:55:15.280]and understand what's going on in Nebraska.
- [00:55:18.760]I know that Dr. Cheney,
- [00:55:20.690]in our last conversation years ago
- [00:55:22.480]was really excited about a nickel accumulator
- [00:55:26.570]that was important.
- [00:55:28.530]So it depends on what it is.
- [00:55:31.210]It's not like,
- [00:55:32.530]I advise that nothing is really a cure-all,
- [00:55:35.240]but it's something that exists now because of this work.
- [00:55:39.090]And I'm not saying just the artwork,
- [00:55:40.570]I'm saying the scientific work.
- [00:55:42.430]And so again, when people first thought about this,
- [00:55:47.800]heard about this,
- [00:55:48.822]they thought I'm out collecting lead,
- [00:55:49.670]whereas too my knowledge,
- [00:55:50.630]no plants to this day collect lead.
- [00:55:54.070]So part of our job is to leave misconceptions,
- [00:56:00.587]because again, it deals with people's lives
- [00:56:03.880]and their health and their future.
- [00:56:06.170]So there was a while, there was a focus on sunflowers
- [00:56:11.166]of having that capacity, and true actually.
- [00:56:14.830]So I don't wanna be a downer tonight,
- [00:56:18.720]but I just wanna let y'all know,
- [00:56:20.256]I can send you the papers on that as well.
- [00:56:23.950]So I keep up with it.
- [00:56:25.110]This is not the only project I've done.
- [00:56:28.190]And so, but I could answer what I can.
- [00:56:31.680]And then of course,
- [00:56:33.170]I would always refer people to Dr. Chaney,
- [00:56:35.410]who's still in contact with me, you know,
- [00:56:38.090]and his whole network of agronomists
- [00:56:42.410]and scientists that know about this.
- [00:56:53.530]If anybody likes,
- [00:56:54.363]you can feel free to unmute yourself
- [00:56:56.210]if you have questions,
- [00:56:57.370]the audience or our professors.
- [00:56:58.940]Yeah, Katie.
- [00:57:01.509]I have a question,
- [00:57:02.934]because we've unpacked so beautifully
- [00:57:06.829]the the scientific implications of this work
- [00:57:10.780]and it's rigor and its effectiveness
- [00:57:14.340]when there were no other ways to do this testing.
- [00:57:19.820]And I keep coming back to the works themselves.
- [00:57:23.330]You know, there's so much rebuilt
- [00:57:25.340]between those little glass slides.
- [00:57:27.380]Like, it's so poetic.
- [00:57:31.210]And I think that when artists make really large projects
- [00:57:36.850]that have these adjuncts or component parts,
- [00:57:41.606]or parts that live on in museums and galleries,
- [00:57:46.140]there's such a cool
- [00:57:49.630]historical scientific experimental materiality to them.
- [00:57:54.100]Like, there's something very sexy and exciting
- [00:57:57.230]about the things themselves.
- [00:57:59.860]So I have two questions.
- [00:58:02.613]One is for Mel Chin,
- [00:58:07.150]which is do you have any specific way,
- [00:58:11.300]did you have any ambitions
- [00:58:13.180]for how to diagram or miniaturize
- [00:58:16.350]or reactivate this experiment?
- [00:58:19.360]And then I have another part of that question
- [00:58:22.630]going to my colleagues,
- [00:58:24.180]which is that when you teach in your fields,
- [00:58:27.389]do you ever ask your students
- [00:58:29.851]what they find cool-looking (laughs)
- [00:58:33.803]about their experimental apparatus?
- [00:58:36.410]Like, what they might show or how they might mobilize
- [00:58:39.870]some of like all of the complicated stuff
- [00:58:41.790]that happens in the lab.
- [00:58:45.670]I can take the first part, 'cause it's directed to me.
- [00:58:48.780]But as a conceptualist,
- [00:58:49.980]sometimes it's all about the idea.
- [00:58:53.193]And when you like to make things,
- [00:58:58.433]then it's a matter of really challenging yourself
- [00:59:02.165]to create the formal structures
- [00:59:04.230]that can carry the full impact.
- [00:59:06.960]Like, in order to do those pieces that you have,
- [00:59:10.707]I had to really look at what I truly love
- [00:59:13.720]about ways that information is conveyed.
- [00:59:17.800]And I looked at, again, the dioramas
- [00:59:20.310]from the Field Museum, or any museum,
- [00:59:23.110]and then say,
- [00:59:23.943]"well, I need to make one of this to tell this story".
- [00:59:26.840]And I've conveyed the science of "Revival Field",
- [00:59:30.830]or the process of "Revival Field",
- [00:59:32.880]in drawings and prints and many ways,
- [00:59:36.060]sometimes telling three possible scenarios of progress,
- [00:59:41.472]and then how to convey the arc of time.
- [00:59:45.200]So you can do it dimensionally.
- [00:59:47.275]I feel like I've gotta send you all a bunch more materials
- [00:59:50.760]to accompany your collection, right?
- [00:59:54.058]I'll just give you some things.
- [00:59:55.821]So, expect some things in the mail (laughs)
- [00:59:58.130]because it's important
- [00:59:59.930]that now you've started with these pieces,
- [01:00:02.770]I feel that the way I work is many different ways.
- [01:00:06.765]And I research actually art and science or ideas,
- [01:00:11.231]to destroy my preconceived notions
- [01:00:13.610]about what things should look like,
- [01:00:15.450]and return to them in a final form.
- [01:00:28.970]Maybe I can say a few words about the second question.
- [01:00:31.906]In the lab we do not directly work with plants,
- [01:00:35.410]but we do work with bacteria.
- [01:00:37.170]We use bacteria to mitigate a lot of the pollutant.
- [01:00:40.360]And a lot of pollutant we study
- [01:00:42.110]are actually colorless and odorless.
- [01:00:44.390]Sometimes it's very hard to envision.
- [01:00:46.630]But the microbes,
- [01:00:47.463]we can see them under the microscope.
- [01:00:49.540]And under the microscope we can see how microbes interact,
- [01:00:53.080]well, how they're located in a soil matrix,
- [01:00:55.466]and how different microbes
- [01:00:57.120]are kind of especially located next to each other
- [01:01:00.750]and interact with each other.
- [01:01:02.550]So for us,
- [01:01:04.586]it's seeing those microscopic images
- [01:01:07.760]that's really fascinating,
- [01:01:09.790]that really put how the microbes do the remediation work
- [01:01:16.150]right in front of our eyes.
- [01:01:22.250]Yes, there's absolutely a lot of beauty in microscopy.
- [01:01:26.043](laughs)
- [01:01:29.890]I just wanna add something real briefly.
- [01:01:34.890]The "Revival Field" also,
- [01:01:37.448]I think there's like maybe five postdocs
- [01:01:39.880]that came out of "Revival Field".
- [01:01:41.250]Future, farther experiments,
- [01:01:42.920]one in Palmerton, Pennsylvania as well,
- [01:01:45.490]and in Germany.
- [01:01:46.880]And what they were looking at, just as note,
- [01:01:50.460]were looking at mycorrhizal kind of relationships
- [01:01:55.063]with hyperaccumulation.
- [01:01:57.610]So looking at funguses as well as that,
- [01:01:59.840]and how they interact,
- [01:02:00.680]as Dr. Li has indicated.
- [01:02:04.970]So, I'm glad to hear that it's still active
- [01:02:07.610]and people are still checking it out, scoping it out.
- [01:02:17.130]This is so interesting.
- [01:02:18.160]I think there's like...
- [01:02:19.806]It's always ideal to keep in mind
- [01:02:22.480]this strong tradition of scientific practices
- [01:02:27.651]looking very much like artistic practices,
- [01:02:30.450]and then the creation modes being kind of the same.
- [01:02:33.900]I mean, that's really evident
- [01:02:35.530]when you look at design labs at MIT
- [01:02:39.810]who are making new forms and shapes
- [01:02:45.340]for biogas storage containers, for instance.
- [01:02:49.730]But like the practice of drawing for instance,
- [01:02:53.530]or the practice of like replicating
- [01:02:56.136]and making publicly available
- [01:02:58.656]the image of microbes.
- [01:03:02.060]Like, all of those things
- [01:03:03.260]are just what constitute knowledge for us.
- [01:03:08.110]Like it feels kind of exciting
- [01:03:13.640]to draw those things together
- [01:03:15.470]in this forum, in this moment.
- [01:03:21.800]We have a message in the chat
- [01:03:23.060]from one of our SSAB members.
- [01:03:25.050]Sophie Curso asks,
- [01:03:26.710]since you said you had taken a step back from art
- [01:03:29.700]before starting this project, Mr. Chin,
- [01:03:32.280]when you began making these pieces,
- [01:03:34.160]did it feel like an extension of "Revival Field"
- [01:03:36.475]in your art making process?
- [01:03:39.660]Kind of, where did you land on that scientific art spectrum
- [01:03:42.520]when you were in your new creative process
- [01:03:44.680]with "Revival Field"?
- [01:03:46.160]Well, the creation of "Revival Field"
- [01:03:47.950]was happening when I negated making art.
- [01:03:51.550]It happened at that moment and it lasted about a year.
- [01:03:55.599]Then I just couldn't help myself,
- [01:03:57.840]I had to make things again
- [01:04:00.230]because then I liberated myself by working in that field.
- [01:04:05.340]So these pieces were made much later,
- [01:04:08.883]when I was reviewing that whole history
- [01:04:11.860]and trying to find gaps within it,
- [01:04:14.280]or things I could have made and never made.
- [01:04:16.430]I had that soil safely contained and also the plants.
- [01:04:21.820]I said, "Well, I can't just leave them
- [01:04:24.230]in those bags and those jars," you know?
- [01:04:27.080]They cried to be free,
- [01:04:28.320]and maybe they could express a little more, you know?
- [01:04:31.750]So I listened to things,
- [01:04:33.090]and it tells you what you must make.
- [01:04:37.350]So yeah, there is this timeline between 1989 and 90,
- [01:04:43.550]when I first conceived of the concept of a revival field,
- [01:04:47.450]and then to 93,
- [01:04:48.850]which is all the subsequent experiments
- [01:04:51.443]that needed to be done.
- [01:04:53.420]And if you look at my history,
- [01:04:57.280]you'll see that I have no signature,
- [01:05:01.690]I'm always looking at what to do next.
- [01:05:04.400]I'm kind of stumped right now,
- [01:05:06.070]so I gotta get busy again. (laughs)
- [01:05:09.045]But in other words,
- [01:05:10.240]it's sort of like a whole process of always beginning.
- [01:05:14.061]And not to be frightful about that,
- [01:05:16.440]because of just like the lessons of art
- [01:05:19.570]that maybe applied in our time
- [01:05:22.330]may lock you into a stylistic or methodology
- [01:05:25.750]that as an artist,
- [01:05:27.100]you should be free to do whatever you want.
- [01:05:29.910]But it can lead you to fields that are far away from you,
- [01:05:33.760]and that's okay, you see,
- [01:05:36.250]'cause you'll find your way.
- [01:05:37.790]So, I hope that kinda answers it.
- [01:05:49.310]I think we have time for one last brief question,
- [01:05:52.260]if anyone has a question?
- [01:05:54.840]I want to be mindful of the time.
- [01:06:00.980]I was just going to say
- [01:06:01.960]those last words that you were speaking, Mr. Chin,
- [01:06:06.300]really, they're very true
- [01:06:10.020]of the scientific process in general, right?
- [01:06:13.427]So, creativity infuses the scientific process
- [01:06:17.670]kind of at all steps.
- [01:06:18.890]And the direction of say, a scientists' career or research
- [01:06:24.437]is sort of guided by the openness that you're talking about,
- [01:06:33.020]and the willingness
- [01:06:33.930]to be able to engage with other disciplines
- [01:06:36.670]and think in new ways about a problem.
- [01:06:39.728]And that requires a lot of creativity,
- [01:06:42.720]but also this sort of relaxation
- [01:06:44.730]that you talked a little bit about at the beginning,
- [01:06:47.180]that you said informed this particular project,
- [01:06:50.091]sort of stepping back
- [01:06:51.890]from what you were working on and doing,
- [01:06:54.680]and that allowed new things to come in.
- [01:06:57.410]And I think that's fundamental
- [01:06:59.540]to scientific advancement as well.
- [01:07:03.680]Well thank you,
- [01:07:04.565]because I just wanna say that I'm very familiar
- [01:07:07.050]with why "Revival Field" actually was accepted,
- [01:07:09.990]was the rigor of peer review.
- [01:07:12.205]And I think that's what scientists must...
- [01:07:14.940]An artist should know
- [01:07:15.830]that scientists have to go through the real deal.
- [01:07:18.630]There are bad scientists and good scientists,
- [01:07:20.869]you know the papers convey many things.
- [01:07:22.800]I learned a lot about a lot by looking through them.
- [01:07:25.860]At the same time,
- [01:07:27.640]I might have presented something a little bit cavalier
- [01:07:30.500]with do whatever you want.
- [01:07:31.333]I think what a artist has,
- [01:07:32.860]is maybe sometimes no peer review,
- [01:07:35.060]but very rigorous self-critical relationships
- [01:07:39.650]with one's thoughts and one's history,
- [01:07:41.870]the whole history of art,
- [01:07:43.628]and the history that you're trying to convey.
- [01:07:46.394]So it's almost like, am I gonna do this?
- [01:07:48.750]Why am I doing this? And why is it important?
- [01:07:51.500]Because you know, "Revival Field",
- [01:07:55.470]it was one of those projects that was driven,
- [01:07:58.550]I could not only see and feel it,
- [01:08:00.380]but I critically understood, not only the need for it,
- [01:08:03.540]but what stood the poetic critique.
- [01:08:07.309]It had to survive first me,
- [01:08:10.290]and then I could share it with the scientists.
- [01:08:12.027]And so it was a shared kind of reality
- [01:08:14.770]that had to happen for this project.
- [01:08:17.090]So I thank you for your thoughts on that.
- [01:08:27.380]I will say thank you.
- [01:08:31.850]Thank you so much
- [01:08:32.683]for a really generous and thoughtful,
- [01:08:36.490]inspiring presentation, Mr. Chin.
- [01:08:39.498]Molly, on behalf of the SSAB.
- [01:08:42.690]Professors Anania, Li and Russo,
- [01:08:46.521]thank you so much.
- [01:08:48.618]Thank you all again for attending.
- [01:08:50.959]I really do encourage you to come visit Sheldon
- [01:08:54.840]before the exhibition closes.
- [01:08:57.920]It runs through July 2nd.
- [01:09:00.120]The works are really wonderful to see in person.
- [01:09:02.937]Again, we invite you to our final Collection Talk program
- [01:09:07.230]of the semester,
- [01:09:08.170]which will be a conversation with artist Amanda Ross-Ho
- [01:09:12.050]on April 28th, at 5:30.
- [01:09:14.270]That will also be on Zoom,
- [01:09:16.300]and the registration link is in the chat.
- [01:09:19.970]Go.unl.edu/april-28.
- [01:09:23.723]With that, thank you.
- [01:09:25.770]Have a wonderful evening.
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